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“What is it?” Thumper asked.
“There’s someone in there. I can hear her.”
“Her?” Slider asked, already gearing up.
I switched the camera feed to my portable device and grabbed my gear as I followed Slider and Thumper to the door. We were across the street, and time was of the essence if someone was trapped in that room. As we ran across the street in the dead of night, I pulled out the camera feed and scanned for the old man.
“IRIS, he’s two minutes out.”
“Uh…guys, we have an issue,” his voice came over comms.
I switched the feed until I was at the basement, and what I saw stopped me in my tracks. “Holy shit.”
“What is it?” Thumper asked, turning and racing back to me.
A woman was tied up in the closet, bleeding and crying, but that wasn’t the most pressing issue at the moment. The bomb strapped to her chest was.
“I’m guessing the company doesn’t have to worry about him stealing,” IRIS muttered as he rushed into the room.
“Let’s move,” Thumper said, flinging the door open to the building and rushing inside. We took the stairs down to the basement and ran through the halls, all of us pulling our weapons as we approached the door that was slightly ajar.
I pulled out the camera feed one last time to get a better idea of the situation inside before we barged through the door. It was worse than I thought. IRIS held a gun on the old man, who incidentally held a gun on him. The woman was out of the closet, but the timer on the front of the vest showed we had less than five minutes to diffuse the situation.
“What’s the plan?” Slider asked Thumper.
“We can’t barge in,” he said thoughtfully. “That’ll only get IRIS shot.”
“We could pull a Grim Reaper,” Slider suggested.
“Not with the hostage in the room,” Thumper snapped.
“Okay, then a Cat’s Meow.”
Thumper looked up, his eyes perking up at the idea. I hadn’t heard of this one.
“What’s a Cat’s Meow?”
But I didn’t get an answer as Thumper snatched the video feed out of my hands and disarmed me in a flash.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
He grabbed my arm and shoved me toward the door, whispering instructions right before shoving me through it, completely unarmed and unprepared for the situation I was walking into.
I stumbled through the open doorway, startling at the sight of the old man, pretending I had no clue what was going on. “Hey, uh…is there a problem?”
The old man took his eyes off IRIS for just long enough for him to grab me around the throat, dragging me in front of him. I sucked in a deep breath. Yeah, this was a much better situation to be in.
“Okay,” I said, stiffening when the man pressed the gun to my head. “Just take it easy.”
I was gonna kill Thumper when I got out of this. The whole idea was that I was supposed to provide the old man with a hostage as he left the building, but still disarm him as he left. It was the only scenario that worked and allowed the actual hostage to be left alone with IRIS in time to dismantle the bomb.
At least, that’s what Thumper told me.
I had my own reservations about being used so callously. “Alright, everyone just calm down,” I said, hoping the man didn’t blow my head off before he tried to escape.
“Shut up,” he growled, pressing the gun further into my skull. “You have three minutes to live. Any last words?” he said laughingly.
“Well, I could really go for a chocolate milkshake one last time,” I said, not sure what else to say.